Today, at last, I finished the second piece for the 2020 Sign Challenge to be held the first few days of April. With the last brush stroke done and everything tested and ready to go it is time to build the shipping crates and send them on their way. The red truck is my official entry while the blue one will be displayed in the Coastal Enterprises booth to help promote the competition.
Base sculpt complete
The bases for both trucks I am creating for the Sign Invitational are now fully sculpted. While somewhat similar at first glance, there are actually getting to be more and more differences as I progress. Today, as I finished building the bases I installed the wiring and switches. These will activate the lights and sound effects which are being produced by my good friend Jim Wells at Fantasonics. Jim is a master at miniature sound and I look forward to hearing what he comes up with! The activation switches are very well hidden in plain sight of course. There is also a large removable rock in each piece which is the access point for the battery packs which are also hidden in the base. Now it is time to start working my way up. The figures are next and then it is on to the trucks!
Real steel fenders!
I’ve pondered how I would make the fenders for the diminutive trucks for the Sign Invitational since I first designed them. I considered many different materials but always came back to making them out of steel. Steel is strong! The fenders need to be sturdy to stand up to the abuse they will encounter during shipping to Florida, and at the show as well. Today, I designed the cutting files, threw a scrap of light gauge steel on the CNC plasma cutter and let it do its magic. In less than a minute I had all the pieces I needed plus a few spares to try my ideas. My designs were just an educated guess as I knew there would be adjustments as I bent things to shape and fitted them. The job turned out to be much easier than I imagined and in about an hour I had both sets of fenders shaped, welded and mounted to the chassis.
